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Once upon a time there were "4X" turn-based strategy games and real-time strategy games and the two philosophies behind them couldn't have been more different. A "4X" game is all about the big-picture: building an empire, sacking enemy cities (or planets) and controlling the movements of millions of soldiers to conquer the known universe. An RTS, on the other hand, is all about moment-to-moment decision making -- move your forces, attack targets, bring up reinforcements and make decisions quickly as the tactical situation changes in a heartbeat. Then along comes the team at Vancouver-based Ironclad Games who see in these two styles not incompatibility, but opportunity. The result is Sins of a Solar Empire, a simply brilliant hybrid of 4X and RTS gameplay that draws from both sides to make a wildly innovative and enjoyable game that's much more than the sum of its parts.

The story of Sins of a Solar Empire is interesting, though hardly original. The Trader's Emergency Coalition, a rigid capitalist oligarchy that comprises most of the human race, is locked in a death struggle with the alien Vasari. The Vasari -- a remnant of a much greater empire that once ruled the galaxy -- are on the run from a self-created enemy stalking them from the Galactic core. Into this mix come the Advent, descendents of an "aberrant" human culture exiled by the TEC a millennium ago and now looking for revenge. Each brings a specific strategic bias to warfare (the Vasari are tough-but expensive, the TEC cheaper and weaker and the Advent reliant on special psionic abilities) that make for three fun and well-balanced militaries for players to use.

Sins of a Solar Empire's basic gameplay won't be unfamiliar to anyone who's spent time in Sid Meier's Civilization series, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations of any of the genre's "4X" brethren. Players begin with one little planet, a few construction ships and a burning ambition to bring the rest of the universe under their steel-toed boot. From such humble beginnings players expand out into a universe consisting of as many planets as the player wishes to set using the highly customizable map creator. These planets generate tax revenue and act as bases and resource and production facilities. Each world also has a "gravity well" surrounding it where building and eventually space combat takes place. The only way to travel from world to world is via a series of pre-defined "jump paths" that offer a variety of strategic challenges by creating a sort of "space terrain" that players need to consider when moving fleets of starships around.

The difference between SoaSE and other "4X" titles is that all of a player's decisions are carried out in the manner of a real-time strategy title. Click on the capital ship factory and it takes approximately 30 seconds for the ship to be produced. Put together a fleet of a dozen or so ships and send them on a three-jump trip to an enemy world and it'll take them eight or so minutes to get there. Once in combat, battle is decided by spaceship strengths and weaknesses, proper positioning and the use of player-controlled special abilities in the manner of a classic RTS -- all of it rendered in stunning graphical splendor.

The final result of this unlikely blending of styles is an elegant and stately ballet in which players use the mouse wheel to zoom from an overarching view of their empire down to the local level where they can tweak the placement of ship factories, defensive emplacements or direct individual spaceships in battle. Despite being in real time, the game's pace is fairly sedate. This allows players plenty of leisure to concentrate on things like developing planetary infrastructure, conducting diplomatic relations with other players in multiplayer games, buying and selling resources on the black market and tweaking their trade networks to maximize revenue. As a "4X" title, Sins of a Solar Empire is filled with the sorts of global "guns or butter?" decision-making that make these titles so much fun.

When battles do occur, players have an impressive amount of control over the makeup, disposition and tactics of their space navies. Each race has a wide variety of purpose-built spacecraft ranging from six different types of mothership down to tiny missile launchers, fighter carriers, gunships, support vessels and much more. The game's deep but easy-to-understand research tree has both a "civilian" and "military" wing that lets players further tweak both their imperial and close-combat strategies to their liking. These different varieties of spacecraft aren't just for show, either. Players can and must put together purpose-designed task forces using a variety of spaceship classes in order to be competitive. They can even take direct control over their ships, though the excellent unit AI is perfectly capable of fighting a decent battle. The result is that the game requires as much strategizing at the unit level as running the whole empire does.